This invention relates to aircraft interior equipment and more particularly, to fittings for releasably securing seating and other equipment in aircraft.
In the manufacture and fitting out of aircraft, purchasers of the same basic aircraft model may require different seating or equipment arrangements. Accordingly, there is frequently a need for fittings that will allow seating, bulkheads, or other equipment to be realeasably mounted in any of a number of selectable locations. Moreover, because attachment points must periodically be inspected for damage or corrosion, the releasable mounts should be capable of being quickly released and reattached so as to minimize the time necessary to conduct the inspections.
Standard aircraft floor track channel comprises a channel having an inverted T-shaped cross-section typically running the length of the passenger cabin of the aircraft. The upper surface of the floor track channel has circular cutouts evenly spaced along the length of the channel, which allow a mounting pin to be inserted into the channel to engage the underside of the channel interior surface, thereby securing the mounting pin to the floor track channel. In order to avoid undue stress on the floor track channel at any one point, it is often preferable to provide multiple mounting points for a single seat or piece of equipment so that the load placed on the floor track channel is distributed.
Multiple methods and apparatus have been proposed for providing fittings for securing equipment and seating to aircraft floor track channel. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,975,822 discloses a quick release fitting comprising an outer housing that is keyed to the floor track channel. The outer housing has a bore that houses a rotatable inverted T-shaped key that rotates through a 90° angle to engage the underside of the floor channel interior. The T-shaped key has a lever and spring-loaded pin lock that allows the user to manly rotate the key and lock it in position. The fitting disclosed in the '822 patent, however, engages only a single lip of the floor track channel and the arm is too long to permit multiple fittings to be placed in adjacent cutouts along the floor track. Accordingly, the quick release fitting of the '822 patent does not provide optimal distributed loading along the floor track channel. Moreover, the quick release fitting disclosed in the '822 patent bears directly on the upper surface of the floor track channel with no means for accommodating misalignment between adjacent channels. Accordingly, in many cases equipment such as a chair that must be attached to two parallel floor tracks cannot be attached using the quick release fitting of the '822 patent without some other means of accommodating angular misalignment.
Accordingly, what is needed is a quick release fitting for securing equipment to a floor track channel that engages the floor track simultaneously over a wider area of the floor track and also accommodates angular misalignment between adjacent floor tracks.